CD – Ash International

How to bring out in the music new possibilities to explore alternative realities, since they are difficult to imagine, if not under the perspective of a spatial and “not naturalistic” acoustics, whose sounds derive from some untraditional fields and approaches? Stefan Goldmann, a Berliner producer, deejay, curator of the label Macro Recordings, working with both the techno and the experimental electronics, tries to answer to this question in “Call and Response”, with the exclusive use of artificial reverberations, who are at the same time vintage and modern units. The psychoacoustics and ambient elements the reverberations produce should not be classified as only a reflection of contemporaneity, because, for example, the locations of many religious buildings or spectacular events would not be so articulated. In this case the difference is given by the possibility to make “artificial” the process, altering the physical qualities of the audio events, especially in their intimate space-time connection. The creation of new sound environments also supposes some harmony plots and occasional feedback, who then assume the form of compositions perceived as fundamentally tridimensional. Every single album score is somehow referred to several genres of modern electronics, and the sounds, all of artificial nature, created in virtual environments, are especially abstract and static, dark and in part also disturbing. The nine tracks of the album include very spatial interpretations, compositions with drones or with glitch and space details, almost always in uninhabitable and sidereal settings, some sound landscapes who are far from being ordinary, some artefacts whose reflection of the surface is amplified in a paroxysmal way and where the space is meant as an instrument. Stefan Goldmann is the son of another composer, Friedrich Goldmann, who was also student of Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt, towards the end of the fifties. Although the many years spent in console at the Berghain and at the Panorama Bar, Stefan has breathed so much “cultured music” to know very well the research Stockhausen made on the reverberations, the study he pursued with the use of the special chambers, generally located in recording studios. Just listening again the famous “Studie I”, a 1953 composition, which is considered the first piece of electronic music ever written, make us aware of everything tends to return, and not just under some simple forms of revival, and confirm that the instrument really are the extension of the senses and are able to lead un into lands otherwise impracticable.

 

Stefan Goldmann – Call and Response